Global Maddy : TAJIKISTAN ~ Roof of the World (May 31 2012)

Pamir Mountains.

Mountains without Names. Swimming to Afghanistan.

There are probably more remote places in the world than Tajikistan, but as “the roof of the world," it’s on the list. Tonight I’m in the Pamirs, gorgeous, remote mountains along the border of Afghanistan, curling over to the border of China.

Afghanistan to L of river, Tajikistan R side

Australian Dayna gazes at Fort Ratm

Grandpa & grandson in Bolunkul, a tough, remote settlement

Tajikistan is a mountaineer’s dream, an anthropologist’s field day, dance/music lover’s find. For three days now I’ve been riding in a Land Cruiser, following a gravel, pot-holed road through a valley – snow-covered mountains on each side. A river divides the Tajik mountains from the Afghan ones. It amazes me to look just a stone’s throw away and see Afghan journeyers on camels, women in blue burka, covered head to foot, and men in white turbans. I wave to a turbaned man watching his flock of sheep. He waves back. “My first Afghan friend,” I say to Dayna, fellow traveler from Australia.


Camel caravan on Afghan side of the river

Our Landcruiser is dwarfed by the awesome landscape

Cow to market enjoys last mountain view

Kerima is at my side, a lovely young woman who is training (on me) to be a tourist guide. Her English is largely incomprehensible, and any “fact” she tells me is something I can get from Lonely Planet. “What mountains are those, Kerima?” I gasp in amazement as a new range emerges around the bend. “These mountains have no names,” she smiles enigmatically.

No names indeed. From the Pamirs you can see some of the world’s highest mountain ranges, all with names, the Karakoram and Himalayas to the south, the Hindu Kush to the west, and the Tien Shan – ones I’d been awed by in Kyrgyzstan – dividing Kyrgyzstan and China in the northeast.

They are still snow covered. Near the mountain town of Khorog, where I arrived after 15 hours jammed in a “taxi” (well-worn Land Cruiser), the fields on both sides of the river were green and lush. On the Tajik side there were occasional cars and busses; on the Afghan side donkey caravans and solo walkers. It looked like the Afghan women were often carrying a blue umbrella over their heads. I eventually realized they had folded their burka to better work in the fields, no unfamiliar Afghan men in sight for the moment.

On the Tajik side small girls dress in modern clothes, and Tajik teens and older women wear brightly colored azore (pants) and matching kurta (tunics), with cheerful matching head scarves. You know me, I had my Tajik azore-kurta set within 24 hours of arrival.

Young women dance atop a mountain in Hisssor

Tajik women wear azore (pants) & kurta (tunic)

Friend Rawane (center), me (R)

My friend Rwane, a Lebanese-Canadian anthropologist, welcomed me into Dushanbe’s (Dushanbe is the capital of Tajikistan) expat world of university academics and NGO workers. My heart stopped as I passed the Aga Khan Foundation building – I’d passed up a job announcement to do fundraising work for this unusual, deeply committed organization. “Maybe a mistake,” I mutter to myself, wondering if they’d filled the spot. I immediately loved Dushanbe, a shady, friendly city. Everyone in the entire country seems in awe or at least respectful of the Aga Khan, the Swiss-born 74 year old Dalai-Lama-like leader of the Ishmaeli sect of Islam. He is credited with ending the 1990 civil war almost single-handedly, and is building community centers and universities in several countries, where somehow his development projects run without graft.

“Keep your right hand on the Koran and your left hand on the Internet,” he was quoted as saying, urging these Central Asian countries into the 21^st century.

Like a rich white tourist – the image I’ve always disdained – I find myself riding with guide and driver in a black Land Cruiser, taking in hot springs, Sufi centers, shrines, sanctuaries, and fortresses that existed 300 years BC. I forgive myself, knowing how incredible this land is, and how few days are on my visa. In command of the car however, I can do what I have always wanted to do – pick up every walker, hitch-hiker, bus-waiter, board-toting person on the road. Our car is soon filled an array of people, going usually just a few kilometers, coming from using the phone, from a funeral, from a visit to an aunt or from a 35-kilometer walk to take sheep to summer pastures. People in the Pamirs are incredibly friendly, greeting us with “Salam” and gesturing us into their traditional adobe homes for tea.

2nd grade in village school

School director's family

“This is why we travel,” says Dayna to our hosts, as we feast on creamy, homemade yoghurt, apricot jam, black currant preserves, freshly baked bread and hot tea at the School Director’s short outdoor table, sitting on carpets. “You cannot capture this moment in photos.” She named it perfectly. I’d taught ‘Bear over the Mountain’ to second graders as we walked past a school, and they’d recited something incomprehensible to us in return – pledge of allegiance, poem of an ancient poet?

I will not tell you that I swam the river to Afghanistan, my own personal peace protest. And since no Taliban saw it on the Afghan side, and no militzia saw it from the Tajik side, and since you have read of no international border incident recently, you could not prove it, either.

I exit Tajikistan after a ride from Khorugh back to Dushanbe, one and a half hours in a tiny 17-passenger prop that for some reason flew not over the mountains, but between the peaks. If the windows could have rolled down, I could have touched a cliff and grabbed fistful of snow. In my sandals and scant Tajik cotton, I prayed we’d make it without crashing, and went up to shake the pilot’s hand upon landing. He and the co-pilot laughed as I left, probably saying something like, “Another old lady peeing in her pants in terror.”What a magnificent, tourist-undiscovered country! What a great place for future Peace Corps Volunteers! What a beautiful land (7% arable). Allah akbar! Gods be praised.